C    C#/Db   D   D#/Eb   E   F   F#/Gb   G   G#/Ab   A   A#/Bb   B/Cb   B#/C (again)

All of these notes are a half step apart and located on the following keys of a piano:

Please take notice of the “#” and “b” symbols after some of the note names. These are known as “sharp” and “flat” notes, respectively. In layman’s terms, a “sharp” note (#) implies that the note/tone/pitch is one half step higher than the note that came before it. C#, for example, is one half step higher than C. Similarly, a “flat” note (b) implies that the note/tone/pitch is one half step lower than the note that came before it; Db is a half step lower than D.

You may be wondering why some of the notes in the list are separated by a slash, or why they are listed as “X or X” on the piano graphic. Notes such as C# and Db are known as “enharmonic notes.” C# and Db are exactly the same; they sound exactly the same if you were to hear them, and they are located in exactly the same fret on the guitar.

I must admit that it’s hard to explain the jump you have to make from simply learning the notes to understanding what key signatures are and how they function. The basic idea is that music compositions usually have a strong, core tonal center from which the music bases itself. These tonal centers provide an easily-identifiable place of recognition not only for the listener, but also for the composer. You may often hear people say, “xyz song is in the key of Bb,” or “Play this in E Major.” When these things are mentioned, the speaker is referring to a key signature.

The Major Keys

In a major key, the intervals of notes from one to another follows this system:

Root note | Whole step (same as two half steps) | Whole Step | Half Step | Whole Step | Whole Step | Whole Step | Half Step

It’s pretty easy, actually. Using this list of intervallic relationships, and starting on the note ‘C’ for the sake of simplicity, a C Major Scale will look like this:

C  D  E  F  G  A  B  (back to C, one octave higher)

If you’re having trouble figuring this out, go back to the list of notes/pitches at the beginning of this article, start on the ‘C’ note, and move forward the appropriate number of steps (half step or whole step) to find the next note.

Key Cycles

Traditionally, we memorize the major keys in a cycle of 4ths, so going up four diatonic (“in key”) pitches from C brings us to F. In all my years of playing music and majoring in music composition in college, I honestly cannot tell you why this cycle moves in 4ths other than to give the music theory student something easy to understand. (As a side note, if anyone knows why this is the case, please tell me; I would love to know!)

Now that we are in the key of F, let’s start building an F Major Scale:

• F (the root note)
• One whole step from F is G
• One whole step from G is A…

So far, so good, right? When we move one half step up to the next note from A, we have a choice of either A# or Bb. Which do we choose? Both notes sound the same, right? The best way I can explain this is that we already have an “A” note in the scale, so for the sake of avoiding unnecessary confusion, we want to use the Bb note name instead, giving us:

F  G  A  Bb

• From the Bb we can move up another whole step to get C.
• From C, another whole step to D.
• Another whole step to E
• And one more half step brings us back to F… back to the beginning but an octave higher.

Put it all together and you get: F  G  A  Bb  C  D  E (F)  – the F Major Scale!

You should continue this exercise through the rest of the key signatures on your own. I’ll give you one more example because I’m such a generous person:

Ab Major = Ab  Bb  C  Db  Eb  F  G

Just in case you need a little push, here is the entire key cycle in 4ths starting from C:

C   F   Bb   Eb   Ab   Db   Gb   B   E   A   D   G

The process of determining the notes of each major key is very easy once you get used to it, and after a eventually you will automatically know that the key of E Major has four sharps, the key of Bb Major has two flats, etc.

Consistency Helps

After you’ve spent some time with the major keys, you should begin to notice that the order sharps and flats appear in each key is constant. As you move through each key, the order of sharps and flats get added to consistently each time. The order of these sharps and flats (also collectively known as “accidentals”) are:

• Sharps – F#, C#, G#, D#, A#, E#, B#
• Flats – Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, Gb, Cb, Fb,

Some interesting things to note:

1. The order of sharps moves in intervals of a fifth.
2. The order of flats moves in intervals of a fourth.
3. The order of both sharps and flats are exactly reversed. Turn the order of sharps around (just for the sake of comparison) and you’ll see that it’s the same exact order as flats.

The ordering of sharps and flats is something you should just memorize. In the long run it makes things MUCH easier to have this information ingrained in your head so you don’t have to think about it while you are playing. I don’t know of an easier way to internalize the order, so just cram it into your brain however you can (consistent practice always works) until you don’t have to think about them anymore.

Putting It on Paper

To identify the key signature of a composition to its performers, the composer writes the number of sharps or flats at the beginning of the piece of music, after the clef and before the time signature, on every staff. For now I have to presume that you know what a music staff looks like and how it works. (If not, please take a look at xxxxxx.) The key of C Major has no sharps or flats, therefore no accidentals appear on the staff at the beginning of the composition. In this case the music staff looks like this:

The key of F Major (one flat – Bb) would look like this:

The key of Bb Major (two flats – Bb and Eb) would look like this:

Here is the complete list (which I hope you tried to figure out on your own, cheaters!):

Luckily, there are a few tricks that make understanding the key signatures easier:

• When looking at a key signature that has “sharp” notes in it, the key signature of the song is one half step above the last sharp that appears on the staff. For example, the key signature with four sharps in it (going in order – F#, C#, G#, D#) would be E Major; one half step up from the last sharp, D#, is E. Make sense? Similarly, the key signature with six sharps in it (F#, C#, G#, D#, A#, E#) would be F# Major. Since E# is enharmonically the same as the note F, the appropriate choice for the next note one half step up would be F#.
• When looking at a key signature that has “flat” notes in it, the key signature of the song is based on the NEXT TO LAST flatted note – the penultimate note for the word nerds out there. As an example, if you take the key signature of 4 flats (Bb, Eb, Ab, Db), look at the second to last flatted note – in this case Ab – and that is the key signature – Ab Major.

Believe me, it might seem like an awful lot to learn, but once you break it down there are only a few components that need to be learned and they are really quite simple to retain once you understand the concepts.

A Minor Issue

I know what you’re saying… “Hey Josh, that’s great, but what about those minor keys I also hear about?”

Ahh, yes… minor keys. Minor keys are very easy now that you have an understanding of the major keys. Minor keys and Major keys are related to each other; that’s why you will sometimes hear them referred to as a “relative minor” or “relative major” key. The best way I can describe minor keys is to get you to start from a major key and move down a minor third (on the guitar this relates to moving up or down three frets). So if you start on “F” for example, and move down three half steps you get the note D. Therefore, D minor and F Major are relative to each other. They both have the same notes in them (D, E, F, G, A, Bb, C). The only difference is that in the key of F Major you use F as the tonal center for your composition, whereas in D Minor (the saddest of all keys, really…) you use D as the tonal center.

If you want to find the relative major key of a minor key, just move UP four ½ steps. The relative major key of B minor is D Major (two sharps – F# and C#). Remember that you will always move down a minor third from a major key to get its relative minor, and you will always move up a minor third from a minor key to get its relative major key.

That’s the long and (not so) short of it. I hope I haven’t confused you guys too much. Look for plenty more articles to come. As always, comments/criticisms/questions and suggestions for future articles are certainly welcome.

Enjoy!

Music Theory Lesson: Key Signatures is a post from: Fretterverse.com: Guitar Blog | guitar news & reviews, amps, effects, guitars, music theory, guitar lessons. If you are reading this on a site that is not Fretterverse.com, it's been ripped. Please come to the real Fretterverse.com.

I know many, many people that aren’t interested in learning music theory; they don’t care what notes are in a CMaj7 chord so long as they know how to play the shape on the guitar. To those people I say simply, “You’re missing out.” There’s certainly nothing wrong with not knowing music theory – several very famous guitar players never learned to read music – but if you put in the time, the rewards will come back to you tenfold.

We’re going to start off very simple, with a look at the most fundamental aspect of music – the music staff:

Exciting, isn’t it? Basically, a music staff is nothing more than five evenly-spaced horizontal lines. Can’t get much simpler than that. Notice that the five lines also create four spaces, one space in between each set of two adjacent lines. Remember this; it becomes important in a minute.

Before we can get into how the lines function, we need to first determine what kind of staff it is. Staff type is determined by which “clef” is used. There are four commonly-used staves:

For the sake of this article we’ll use the treble clef, but I will explain the other three later as well so you are well-rounded. (Just think of the conversations you can start when buying the lovely lady a drink at the bar.)

In order for the musicians to know that they are dealing with the treble clef, you put it at the very beginning of the staff:

Now that you (and the musician) knows that you are dealing with the treble clef, it’s easy to explain where the notes are supposed to go. Starting at the bottom, the first (bottom) line is the note “E”:

Moving up from the first “E” note, we put a note in the first space. This is the note “F”:

Moving up from there, we have “G”:

I don’t think I need to go through all of the notes, do I? Good… if you go through them yourself – which you certainly should – you’ll realize that the top line of the staff is the note “F.” The cool thing is that the notes don’t really stop there. You can put notes above the staff. For example, the space above the top line (“F”) is the note G:

Go up another step from there and you have the note “A.” The problem is that without a guide it would be very hard to stick a bunch of notes in the space above the staff and have the musicians figure out which pitch the note is. Back in the day the guys were really smart, however, and came up with a way to make this much easier; they created lines and spaces above the staff. For example:

This is the note "A"

The note “B” above this would be:

You can continue this upward for a while. Be aware, however, that each instrument has its own range. Certain instruments can only reach up so high (or low). You have to keep this in mind when writing music; certain instruments (and even certain players) won’t be able to hit certain notes.

Moving down the staff, you can have notes go below the staff. For example, the lowest note on the guitar is an E, which looks like this:

You can follow the notes down from the “F” we started with (first line of the staff) to the low E note I just showed you.

Now, at the beginning of the article I also showed you four different clef types. I think now is a good time to show you how the other three work. Most likely you’ll see the bass clef most often after the treble clef. Here it is again in case you forgot:

The bass clef is also called the “F clef.” Why is that you ask? Well… do you see the two small dots? Those dots straddle the line that, as it pertains to the bass clef, is the note “F.” In essence the two dots of the “F” clef pretty much tell you where the note “F” is. (Too bad the treble clef doesn’t do this too, right?)

Using the same principle as we did with the treble clef, you can figure out what the notes are if you keep in mind that the fourth line from the bottom (straddled by the two dots) is the note “F.”

The alto and baritone clefs are slightly similar. Here is the alto clef:

See the number three looking thing? If you look closely, you’ll see that the middle line is where the two loops of the clef meet. Do you see it? In the alto clef, that middle line is the note “C.” If you look at the baritone clef (see the graphic at the beginning of the article), the same principle of finding the “C” note applies, but this time it’s the fourth line from the bottom.

You probably won’t use the alto or baritone clefs much at all, unless you are deeply into classical music. But you should know about them nonetheless.

That’s about it, Fretheads. It’s quite straight-forward. You should now be able to recognize what the music staff is and how it functions, and with a little practice you should be able to pick out the notes quickly.

Enjoy!

Music Theory Lesson: The Music Staff is a post from: Fretterverse.com: Guitar Blog | guitar news & reviews, amps, effects, guitars, music theory, guitar lessons. If you are reading this on a site that is not Fretterverse.com, it's been ripped. Please come to the real Fretterverse.com.